Short form
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Still questionable if such a trip would be possible at all. But training and preparing is half the fun. I’m now aiming for late in the season. With the added benefit of better/warmer weather. But after having to skip hiking the Kungsleden Sweden and with just two weeks to go having to cancel my Tour du Mont Blanc (backup) plan. It would be nice if I can make something work (solo hiking should be safe in the current situation, it’s the traveling that poses a problem). ↩︎
∞ VS dreigen met uitschakelen Starlink bij mislukken van mineraaldeal met Oekraïne’ - NRC
Amerikaanse onderhandelaars hebben Oekraïne onder druk gezet om akkoord te gaan met een voorstel over de levering van mineralen. Als dat niet gebeurt, dreigen de Verenigde Staten het Starlink-satellietnetwerk van Elon Musk uit te schakelen.
Dit is wel een hele ruime interpretatie van “onderhandelen”.
∞ The Weak Strongman - Timothy Snyder
Many Americans fear Trump, and so imagine that others must. No one beyond America fears Trump as such. He can generate fear only in his capacity as neighborhood arsonist, as someone who destroys what others have created. America’s friends are afraid not of him but of what we all have to lose. America’s enemies are not frightened when Trump kicks over the lantern and sets things on fire. Quite the contrary: he is doing exactly what they want.
But I fear that this was just the characteristic American mistake of imagining that, because Americans react submissively to Trump’s words, others must as well. For words to matter, there has to be policy, or at least the possibility that one might be formulated. And for there to be policy, there have to be institutions staffed with competent people. And Trump’s main action so far, or really Musk’s action so far, has been to fire exactly the people who would be competent to design and implement policy. Many of the people who knew anything about Ukraine and Russia are gone from the federal government.
Timothy Snyder makes a convincing argument that the current U.S. President is merely posturing as if he has real power over the global political arena. While I’m not a political analyst by any means, common sense suggests that these actions indeed weaken the United States, bewilder U.S. allies, and ultimately play into the hands of Russia and, perhaps to an even greater extent, China.
∞ Bezuinigingen, wantrouwen: in de VPRO-familie is het niet zo gezellig meer - NRC
Goede artikel over de achtergrond van de situatie bij de VPRO. Lees het wel met pijn in het hart, veel van de programma’s zijn echt waanzinnig sterk. Misschien niet voor een groot publiek, maar altijd relevant.
Moving my personal blog back to Micro.Blog. Dabbled a bit with Hugo on Cloudflare Page. Result in tinkering to much and not writing enough.
Gradually moving my online presence towards the Fediverse. Main website -here- on micro.blog, microblogging via Mastodon, reading updates on Bookwyrm and busy moving my photography to Pixelfed.
Took a few days off writing on my blog. Just to enjoy the holidays. But reading a post from Seth Godin inspired me to pick up writing earlier than planned. Kicking off the next year writing instead of starting writing again in 2021. A minor difference but important to me.
Few days late to the party but moOde audio v7 (v7.0.1 to be exact) is available. Very solid upgrade, looking forward to using the 12-band Parametric EQ.
It’s quite a different Christmas this year, but me and my girlfriend are fortunate to be both in good health and able to just enjoy these days together.
Finally a Brexit-deal. We will need to see how this will work in practice, but I guess it’s good that it’s done.
As the year is ending things normally wind down at work. A good time to pick up the last remaining tasks and chores just finishing the year with a clean slate. This year is not so different except in two important ways. There are many loose ends all taking way more time than I expected.
Getting around to finish my photography portfolio site. I am happy with the move to Adobe Portfolio, it’s free (with a creative cloud subscription) and syncs with Lightroom. Although the selection of images is still a bit messy as I did have sync issues to resolve.
Great interview with Art Adams from Arri talking about cinema lenses. I’m not shopping for >$25k Arri Signature prime lenses, but there is a ton of information about the general challenges when designing lenses and how to overcome them (which also applies to photography).
Had some sync errors with Lightroom tonight, spend most of the evening solving 9 errors. It turned out that there was an issue with the metadata and you should fix errors with syncing paused. Gladly it’s resolved. Editing has to wait until tomorrow.
11:02 AM this morning marked the start of the winter. And as much as I believe each season has its beauty, I am looking forward to having a bit more daylight.
Today marks my 50th-day streak. The process of blogging every day has been a great experience so far. I do not feel limited by the subject of my writing anymore. My blog has turned into a public diary, but I am ok with that.
Finally got around to decorating the house a bit for Christmas. As every year, it’s something that gets postponed to the last few days before the actual holiday starts. We do keep things quite minimal, but still, it brightens up the house.
Yesterday I splurged a little on a warm mid-layer for my winter hiking trip1. Usually, I would pack a super light fleece, but that won’t cut it in winter conditions.
Got the Fjallraven Keb Fleece Hoodie. Expensive -even with a discount- but the quality is excellent. The G-1000 Eco patches on the shoulders will be super helpful when carrying a pack. And the fit is perfect for me. Overall the Keb hoodie seems to strikes a balance between warmth, comfort (breathability), and durability. Let’s see how it goes tomorrow on a longer training hike.
I also specifically looked at light jackets. Using a jacket as a mid-layer seems to be the new trend in hiking/mountaineering. I’m not a fan. I like the flexibility of something that breaths better as I can always put more layers over it when I need to. Trying to get one mid-layer for insulation and when on the move will end up being too warm for active or too cold for inactive use.
Day three of the more stringent lockdown in The Netherlands. With the holiday season around the corner, we could have been in a much better position. I expect the start of 2021 to still be rough. Fortunately we are moving nearer to the end of it all.
Today I installed Solarized as a theme for Obsidian. All instances switched automatically as they are setup to pull the Github repository which includes the notes as well as the Obsidian setting files. Sometimes small things can make your day.
After a day off I’m back in my home office. The Obsidian Github sync works like a charm. All notes, todo’s are in perfect sync and stored at Github. Also found a community plugin which makes the whole process, even more, user-friendly. Tonight adding my RPi NAS and desktop.